It seemed to me a long time before the job was finished, though I daresay it was in reality only a matter of forty-five seconds.  I know I felt vastly relieved when, with a quick intake of his breath, McMurtrie suddenly sat back and began to contemplate his work.

“Well?” I inquired anxiously.

He nodded his head, with every appearance of satisfaction.

“I think we can call it a complete success,” he said.  Then he stepped back and looked at me critically from a couple of paces away.  “What do you think, Sonia?” he asked.

“I suppose it’s what you wanted,” she said, in a rather grudging, ungracious sort of fashion.

“If you won’t think me vain,” I observed, “I should like to have a look at myself in the glass.”

McMurtrie walked to the fireplace and unhooked the small mirror which hung above the mantelpiece.

“I would rather you waited for a couple of days if you don’t mind,” he said.  “You know what you used to look like better than any one else, and it will be a good test if you see yourself quite suddenly when the whole thing is finished.  I will borrow this—­and keep you out of temptation.”

“Just as you like,” I returned.  “It will at least give me time to train myself for the shock.”

Quick and easy as the first operation had been, the second proved equally simple.  The only apparatus it involved was an ordinary X-ray machine, with a large glass globe attached to it, which McMurtrie brought up the next morning and arranged carefully by my bedside.  On his pressing down a switch, which he did for my benefit, the whole interior of this globe became flooded with those curious lambent violet rays, which have altered so many of our previous notions on the subject of light and its power.

McMurtrie placed me in position, and then producing a large sheet of finely-beaten-out lead, proceeded to bend and twist it into a sort of weird-looking helmet.  When I put this on it covered my head and face almost completely, leaving only an inch of hair along the forehead and perhaps a little more over each temple exposed to the light.

Thus equipped, I sat for perhaps an hour in the full glare of the machine.  It was dull work, and as McMurtrie made no attempt to enliven it by conversation I was not sorry when he eventually flicked off the switch, and relieved me of my headgear.

I had expected my hair to tumble out in a lump, but as a matter of fact it was over two days in accomplishing the task.  There was no discomfort about the process:  it just came off gradually all along my forehead, leaving a smooth bare line which I could feel with my fingers.  As soon as it was all gone, McMurtrie proceeded to decorate me with some kind of stain that he had specially prepared for my face and neck—­a composition which according to him would remain practically unaffected either by washing or exposure.  It smelt damnably in the pot, but directly it was rubbed in this slight drawback disappeared.